The long term-objective of this research program is to understand how operation of the cognitive components within the text processing system is coordinated, representing a significant advance beyond previous research examining particular component processes in isolation. The program centers around development of a theoretical account of the text processing system, which integrates text-processing research with basic research on automaticity and memory. Initial research will evaluate a core assumption of this theory, which states that components of the text processing system share a limited pool of processing resources. The basic experimental approach will be to examine the operation of a given component while varying the resource demands of another component (e.g., examining the extent to which inferences are formed when syntactic complexity is manipulated). Subsequent research will adapt this experimental approach to evaluate other core assumptions of the theory. Findings from this programmatic research will have important theoretical and applied implications.